Customers hot about Met-Ed, PPL energy-saving programs that shut down their AC.

It's going to be a scorching hot Sunday, folks. And while you're sitting in church, mowing the lawn or firing up the grill, you may want to thank the Lord — and Thomas Alva Edison — for the cool sanctuary of your air-conditioned home.

But customers of PPL's E-Power Peak Saver and Met-Ed's EasyGreen energy conservation programs are praying that their central air conditioners work on days like this the rest of the summer, because the programs didn't get off to a hot start.

When the temperature hit 95 degrees June 20 — the first day the programs were implemented — some participants told me their air conditioners were shut down.

"I was really, really going out of my mind," said Nora Whitesell of Forks Township, an EasyGreen participant.

Apparently, so were a lot of other customers, as Met-Ed received more than 1,000 complaints and questions from participants. More than twice that number complained to PPL, which said about 750 customers dropped out of its Peak Saver program as a result.

The complaints didn't stop PPL from firing up the program again Friday after making several tweaks. Spokesman Michael Wood said it seemed to work better. But Met-Ed hasn't fired up its EasyGreen program again, suspending it indefinitely for the 20,000 or so participants.

The programs are designed to help utilities meet a federal energy savings requirement that kicked in this year. For agreeing to sweat a bit, participants are offered gift cards and discounts on their bills.

The utilities remotely control central air conditioners during periods of peak power demand on the hottest days. Met-Ed's program shuts them down long enough for inside temperatures to slip 6-9 degrees, depending on the program's terms.

PPL's program now cycles air conditioners on and off every 15 minutes during the length of the restrictions, which lasted four hours Friday afternoon. That's different from how it ran June 20-21. Then, it limited air conditioners to run only half the time each hour that they ran in the hour before the program was activated.

So if your air conditioner was on for 30 minutes in the hour before the program kicked in, it ran for only 15 minutes each hour it was throttled down. That resulted in some homes heating up quickly.

Whitesell said she had been told by Met-Ed that her air conditioning wouldn't be off for more than 20 or 25 minutes, but it shut down for six hours June 20. The temperature in her home rose to 87 degrees. She feared for her elderly mother's health, so they sat outside because it was cooler.

"Six hours is unacceptable," said Whitesell, who wasted $80 calling a service technician to check her unit.

AC units aren't supposed to shut down the entire time EasyGreen runs, but rather cycle on and off so the temperature in a home does not fluctuate much. A device on the air conditioner's compressor and a sensor plugged into an outlet near the thermostat signal when the AC should come back on to maintain that variance.

An investigation found no problems with EasyGreen equipment or operations, said Scott Surgeoner, a spokesman for FirstEnergy, Met-Ed's parent company.

"For the most part, the program worked as it was supposed to," he said.

There were some problems, though, including insufficient customer service reps to handle complaints and participants not having all the information they needed. That prompted Met-Ed to suspend the program June 21. When it's restarted, Met-Ed says it will control units in the program for up to six hours at most.

Surgeoner said the program may not have worked for some people because they either tampered with EasyGreen equipment or adjusted their thermostat when the program was running. Something as simple as that can prevent the AC from kicking back on, he said.

If that's so, Met-Ed and its vendor that runs the program, BPL Global, need to explain that to participants.

Whitesell said she never was told to keep her hands off the thermostat while EasyGreen was running. She said she wasn't even aware the program had been activated.

That's another issue Met-Ed and PPL say they will address. The only sign that your AC was being restricted was an indicator light on the equipment, so I'm betting many people didn't know. The companies say they now will provide advance notice, which PPL started Friday by calling the 44,000 participants in Peak Saver.

I am enrolled in EasyGreen and it didn't work exactly as advertised in my home, either. The temperature rose seven degrees instead of six, according to my account data. One degree is no sweat for me, but still warmer than promised.

The state Public Utility Commission is aware of the problems. It has contacted all electric companies that have similar programs, "asking for specific data related to any issues," spokeswoman Denise McCracken said.

PECO has a similar program called Smart A/C Saver. I did not hear any complaints about that program.